In collaboration with Dundee Contemporary Arts, the Centre for Screen Cultures organised a special screening of the 1938 film The Drum in black-and-white on 16mm film. The screening accompanied the current exhibition ‘Our Mountains Are Painted on Glass’ from London-based filmmaker Michelle Williams Gamaker. An Alexander Korda production set during British colonial rule of India, The Drum follows Captain Carruthers as he seeks to pacify a brewing rebellion after the governor signs a treaty with the ruler of the Tokot kingdom. The king’s son Prince Azim (played by the actor Sabu) befriends Captain Carruthers and a young drummer from the British military regiment. Prince Azim must hide after the assassination of his father, before uncovering a secret plot forcing him to decide where his allegiances lie.
As part of the exhibition, film ephemera collected by the artist is on display, particularly relating to the actors Sabu and Anna May Wong. The 16mm print of The Drum forms part of the artist’s collection, which until now she had been unable to view. After the screening, a conversation between the artist and film scholar Dr Kulraj Phullar explored how collecting film ephemera informs Williams Gamaker’s filmmaking, the complexity of the film’s narrative, the character of Prince Azim, the reception of The Drum in India and its intersection with the real life of actor Sabu.
Dr Kulraj Phullar is a London-based Film Studies researcher, and occasional curator and programmer. He specialises in classic Hollywood, British colonial and diasporic cinemas, and popular Indian cinemas. He has taught most recently at King’s College London, MetFilm School, and the National Film and Television School.
Michelle Williams Gamaker is a Sri-Lankan British award-winning moving image artist. Since 2014, she has been developing Fictional Activism: the restoration of marginalised film stars of colour as central figures, who return in her works as brown protagonists to challenge the fictional injustices to which they have been historically consigned. By proposing critical alternatives to imperialist storytelling in British and Hollywood studio films, she interrogates cinema by sabotaging the casting process and utilising cinema’s tools against itself.
Williams Gamaker is joint winner of Film London’s Jarman Award (2020) and has an extensive national and international profile, including prestigious BFI London Film Festivals (2017, 2018 and 2021), Aesthetica Short Film Festival (winner of Best Experimental Film, 2021 and 2023) and Raindance (2022).
Recent group exhibitions include A Tall Order!, Rochdale Art Gallery (2023) and a major public commission Springfield Eternal in the atrium of Springfield Hospital for charity Hospital Rooms (2023), Like There is Hope and I Can Dream of Another World at Hauser & Wirth, Whitechapel’s The London Open 2022 and I Multiply Each Day, Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland (2021),
Williams Gamaker’s major institutional solo exhibition, Our Mountains are Painted on Glass premiered Thieves (2023), her first film in Fictional Revenge. Thieves was co-commissioned by Film London, South London Gallery and Dundee Contemporary Arts. The show will tour to Bluecoat, Liverpool in 2024. Her work is in the Arts Council Collection, distributed by LUX and her entire filmography is part of the BFI National Film Archive. She is currently working toward a new body of work in Fictional Healing, which will complete her Critical Affection Trilogy.
Williams Gamaker is Reader in BA Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and is currently a British Academy Wolfson Fellow. She is a Studio Artist at Gasworks, where she is also a trustee.